Aftermath
by LadyScribe
Summary: Lisa's life after the incident. Oneshot.


Hi everyone, and welcome my first Red Eye fic. This has been bouncing around in my head since I saw the movie for the first time in August, and I just had to write it, despite being in the middle of a LotR story. Needless to say, I thought the movie was amazing and the acting was phenomenal. Uh…I guess that's it. I hope you enjoy this!

Disclaimer: Red Eye does not in any way, shape, or form, belong to me.

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The first time Lisa saw a plane after the incident, she had been locking the door to her apartment. She had pulled herself together enough to go to work that day (or so she thought), and happened to glance out of the hall window perpendicular to her door. It was a tiny, gleaming silver speck, but she still imagined that she could see the words Fresh Air on it. She watched it silently, her hand frozen on her key, which was in limbo between locking and unlocking the door. As soon as the plane disappeared beyond the line of vision the window afforded her, she smoothly twisted her key to the right, unlocked her door, and stepped back inside her apartment. Dead bolting her door (as she now had a deadbolt), she mechanically dropped her keys, walked into the bathroom, and threw up. Resting her head against the porcelain bowl, she waited for the violent trembling to subside.

It was that day that she quit her job.

The second time she'd held a gun in her life had been twenty-three days after she'd fired at Jackson Rippner. Her father had purchased it for her, and with the help of a retired friend on the force, managed to get an expedited 'concealed weapons' permit. She found the gun on her kitchen counter with a note and an instruction manual. If Lisa had been a different person, she would have laughed at her father's simplicity; he had left his only child with a loaded gun and a fucking _instruction manual_ after she had been through a trauma of that magnitude. But Lisa wasn't suicidal, and she didn't laugh. Instead, she carried the gun into her bedroom, clicked on the safety, and hid it underneath her mattress. After a moment's consideration, she retrieved the gun and clicked the safety off.

This was also twenty-two days after the police told her that Jackson, along with the ambulance he had been rolled into, had vanished. An officer with a receding hairline and tobacco stained teeth told her that the paramedics must have been his co-workers, but no worries, Mr. Rippner was sure to be found. So far, he hadn't been. She had been asked if she wanted police officers stationed outside of her building 24/7 for her protection, but she declined. The thought of someone watching her again as she made scrambled eggs at three in the morning made her queasy.

In the weeks following the incident, (God, she was starting to hate calling it that), Lisa was convinced that she was rebuilding her life, and that she had come out of it a stronger and better person. She had quit her job, but she was still young-she'd have a better one in no time. She went out with Cynthia a few times to have lunch. She rearranged her furniture, trying to ignore the part of her mind that mentally mapped out escape routes and noted lamps that could become possible weapons. She bought cans pepper spray and hid them around her house, just in case. In another brush with morbid humor, she kept her hockey stick at her bedside.

Sometimes Lisa would go out in the middle of the night when she couldn't stand tossing and turning in bed anymore. She would drive to all night drugstores or fast-food restaurants and walk alone in the deserted parking lots. Then she'd get back in her car and drive home, thrilled with an intoxicating sense of power and hysterical exhilaration, enjoying the high it gave her. Then she'd collapse against her front door, triple-locking it, and curl in a ball on the floor.

She saw him everywhere. He was standing in line at the bank or browsing in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. He was the man working in the bagel store four blocks down from her or the father of two who walked his sons to the bus stop. Every flash of dark hair or blue eyes sent her skin crawling. Her heart would skip a beat when she heard smooth jazz playing in the car next to her or in an elevator. She found herself staring at red scarves and abhorring nachos, which disgusted her to no end. She was supposed to be moving on with her life. She was supposed to have stopped craving Sea-Breezes and avoiding eye-contact with eligible men. She was supposed to have thrown out all of her modest, clean-cut clothes and sensible, two-inch heels. Well, that was partly true. She had upgraded to three and a half inch heels, and never left the house without them.

She found herself lingering at the local library, politely declining the help of the librarian, thanks but no thanks, smiling tightly. She would pull up search engines on her laptop and watch the cursor blink in the little blank box. She didn't want to acknowledge what she thought in her head. Instead, she checked out bubbly romance novels at the library and looked for recipes online. She held out for thirty-nine days before practically pouncing on the librarian and then walking to a table in the back with eight books held awkwardly and precariously in her arms. Bile rose in her throat as she flipped through the first book with shaking fingers before stopping and carefully reading once, twice, three times what she found.

**_Stockholm syndrome_**

_(Psychiatry_

_1. An emotional attachment to a captor formed by a hostage as a result of continuous stress, dependence, and a need to cooperate for survival._

_2. A phenomenon in which a hostage begins to identify with and grow sympathetic to his or her captor._

She tried a few more books, then slowly got to her feet and left, not even responding to the librarian when asked if she had found what she had been looking for.

Sometimes she dreamed about him; most of the time, she struggled valiantly and heroically before admitting defeat when he pursued her. Other times, though, she didn't struggle. She did things that made her want to vomit, made her afraid to go to sleep, but at the same time... She cried every time she woke up with the sheets twined around her legs and her hair damp against her forehead. She cried when she got in the shower and turned it as cold as she could before twisting the knobs to make it scalding hot. She cried when she scrubbed her skin so viciously it turned a bright, ugly pink. And she cried when she realized one day that her scar only reminded her of one man; the only man who had seen it since the knife tore her skin in the parking lot and the female doctor stitched it up. (She had known she wouldn't be able to have a man touch her so intimately, albeit clinically, for some time.)

Some nights when she couldn't sleep she wondered if he was still alive. Had he died from his wounds? Had his company killed him as punishment? She wondered if his voice had been ruined, or if he could still even speak at all. She looked up tracheotomies online once and was both disappointed and relieved to find that patients healed quickly, often with their normal voices virtually intact. She even briefly wondered it Jackson Rippner was his real name (she was sure it was, he didn't lie) and if he had been forced to change it due to the circumstances. She wondered if he thought of her when he ate scrambled eggs, drank vodka, or watched old movies. She wondered if he wanted to kill her for thwarting him or admired her for doing so. She wondered if he even thought of her at all, and then wondered why she cared.

Nearly seven months after the incident, Lisa woke up in the middle of the night yet again. This time it was different, though; she was sure as soon as she opened her eyes that something was wrong. She quietly reached beneath her mattress and pulled out the gun. She crept out of bed and walked down the hall to the living room, where a light she was sure she hadn't left on shone brightly. Taking a deep breath, she crossed the threshold with the gun held high, the safety consciously left on.

She wondered why she cried when he wasn't there.

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Thank you for reading! I really hope you enjoyed it. Please review-I love feedback. The excerpt about Stockholm syndrome is from an online dictionary.


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